GOP--No Price is Too High to Prevent a Win By Obama

Krugman in the NYT is a must read:

As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.

Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”

But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced.

Krugman does a good job of debunking the arguments. Everybody who is interested in the passage of Obama's stimulus package needs to read this column. Once again the Republicans are demonstrating why they lost the White House and both houses of Congress. They are lying, which appears to be the only pony in their show. They don't care that Obama's efforts to stimulate the economy are based on sound economic principles and are desperately needed if we are to avoid a depression. What they are afraid of is success by Obama and by extension the Democrats. Success in reviving the economy by the Democrats now in power will destin the GOP to the political wilderness for a generation or more. They know it, and preventing an Obama success is more important to them than the survival of the American economy. They don't care if you and I starve, lose our cars, houses and or life savings.

The complete destruction of the American economy is a small price for them to pay in order to stop Obama from winning the battle over the economy.